Good evening, everyone. My name is Walter Armbrister.
I'm a fellow of the Middle East Centre and I'm going to be hosting tonight's speaker, who is Dr. Kristin Henderson?
He's a university lecturer in international relations and modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Leiden.
He's a scholar of political economy and development in the Middle East.
His research focuses on the Arab region with a particular focus on Gulf investment in the states of North Africa and the Levant.
World development and business politics. He has 20 years of experience working in the Middle East.
He was previously a journalist in Lebanon and for Al-Jazeera in Qatar.
He covered the 2006 Israel Hezbollah war, and he consulted on business and politics in the Middle East for corporations and governments.
His next project is going to examine the consequences of a green energy shift in the Middle East and North Africa region,
focussing on the modality of state implementation of renewable energy and the reconfiguration of regime power through these schemes.
Economically, political and ideological. And I want to say to the audience that you should ask your questions using the Q&A function in Zoom.
After Dr Henderson has spoken, we will.
It will, of course, entertain questions. And so if you if you send questions on the Q&A function, if you want to be anonymous, then you should say so.
Otherwise, when I read your question out, I will read your name.
The title of Dr Henderson's lecture is What does political ecology tell us about environmental crisis in the Middle East?
Take it away, Christian. Hello and good evening. Thank you for coming to this lecture and thank you to St. Anthony's College for the invitation.
It's a real honour and pleasure to be here. So essentially,
what I'm going to talk about this evening is political ecology and what kind of lessons we can draw from political
ecology in terms of understanding the forms of environmental crisis that are currently unfolding within the region.
Now this isn't necessarily a piece of research.
It's rather a set of reflections and conclusions that are drawn through teaching
a course here at Leiden University on political college in the Middle East.
So in that sense, I will do my best to reference some of the scholars that have really kind of allowed me to come
to some of these conclusions that are featured on the syllabus of the course that I teach.
But if anyone is interested to see the reading list of the syllabus, please do get in contact with me and I will.
I can send it to you in order that they received the the citations that they deserve.
So what I'm going to do today is essentially go through a talk that has about three or four stages.
Firstly, I'm going to to define what I mean by political ecology.
I'm going to kind of explain what that that entails, what kind of theoretical and conceptual tools that gives us.
And then I'm going to talk a little bit about the way in which the environment tends to be
perceived within the western imaginary the environment in the Middle East and North Africa.
That is and how we can use political ecology as a tool to kind of deconstruct that.
I will then talk about the projects and plans and policies that are being implemented by governments in the
region and what political ecology tells us about those those projects and why they may not be successful.
And lastly, I will offer some alternative possibilities some alternative forms of environmental relations in the region that we
could examine and use to give us perhaps a little bit more of an optimistic idea of what may happen in the future.
So firstly, let me just explain what I mean by political ecology.
So political ecology is essentially a means of understanding the way in which the environment is determined by society.
It places an emphasis on the manner in which resources, crisis externalities are distributed unequally within society.
So in this sense, this framework considers that ecology is political.
It pushes back on the notion that environmental governance is neutral or apolitical.
And with this lens, we can see that a problem such as scarcity is really socially constructed.
It is not a problem that is created by the limitations and capacities of our natural environment.
And I think this is an important point to remember in terms of what are we discussing about in terms of the Middle East.
So in this sense, political ecology is opposed to the ideas of someone like Thomas Mathis,
who argued that population growth would lead to crisis and starvation due to the limitations of environment and political goals.
You would really push back on this idea because it doesn't necessarily take into account the way in which resources are distributed unequally.
Now what attracts me to this conceptual field is that this isn't just an abstract, critical academic theory.
It also offers quite practical means of establishing alternative ecological relations,
alternative ways of achieving some sort of form of environmental sustainability.
And one way it does that is through an emphasis on human agency.
So political culture, you would remind us that there is always human agency over the environment,
and there is always the means to transform our environment, both in a bad way, but also in a good way.
So in this vein, the field would pay considerable attention to the successful environmental custodianship of native peoples.
It would pay attention to the forms of environmental management, management and knowledge that are manifest in traditional practises.
It would also include discussions on alternative economic systems on the basis that the
model of infinite economic growth is essentially incompatible with sustainability.
So it would within this kind of conceptual field.
You could also argue that ideas such as degrowth or doorknock dollar economics offer these kinds of alternatives.
Now, I won't go any further on the theory. It's late on Friday evening, and perhaps it's not the right time for a discussion about theories,
so I'm going to move on now to a more kind of empirical reflection. So.
When we look at the Middle East,
we can see that there is no doubt that the environment in the Middle East is in a state of crisis as it is in every part of the world.
Carbon emissions and a warming climate are projected to result in temperature increases that could threaten many forms of life.
The droughts and declining food yields will be severely detrimental, particularly for the poorest societies in the region.
Other problems include biodiversity loss, waste, unsustainable material, extraction of resources,
water minerals, and all of these are placing extreme pressure on US life systems.
And none of what I say in this lecture refutes this reality. However, what I would say is that using the framework of political ecology,
we can see that these types of problems within the Middle East and North Africa tend to be treated in quite an exceptional manner,
and this is present in Western media, but also present, I think to a certain extent in some forms of Western scholarly research.
So generally, there is a tendency to portray the environment in the region as distinct from that in the West.
And I'm going to show you a couple of examples. Can everyone see that slide?
So here we can see some examples of news headlines or reporting of the on the environment within the region.
And I think they perhaps give you some idea of the kind of sensationalism and exceptionalism that is present in some of this reporting.
And generally, we can see that there is there are more deeper tropes as well.
Often, the Middle East environment is portrayed as really unruly and badly governed,
a condition that threatens to lead to societal collapse and migration that could threaten European stability.
And one very good example of this is the argument that was quite popular around 10
years ago that the revolution and civil war in Syria was started by climate change,
and the argument was that the drought that took place in the 2002, 2007 and 2008 was caused by climate change,
and that drought pushed a number of farmers off their land, then were forced to internally migrate to the cities.
And these people then were dissatisfied and unhappy, and they were a major, the major actors in the revolt that took place in 2011.
And this isn't a marginal argument. This is an argument that was very popular at that time.
And this is probably part of the last decade. And as an example, it was actually repeated by President Obama.
Now, however, as a number of scholars have pointed out, people such as Mark Withouta and John Selby, as well as others, there is little evidence.
The evidence for this argument is very questionable. In fact, it seems very doubtful.
There isn't really that much evidence that this was the chain of events that actually took place,
and they would also argue that this ignores the political and social roots of what took place in Syria.
Now, this link between conflict and resources in the region is also repeated elsewhere.
You can find this trope emerge in many different forms.
And generally, there is a kind of picture that this is a region that is in a constant state of chaos and conflict as a result of natural resources.
And if any of you are interested,
I recommend that you read some of the articles by Clemence Hoffmann who's written about this and quite succinct manner.
So, for example, conflicts in Sudan and Syria are explained on the basis of resource scarcity.
Another example would be the fact that would be this constant argument that you can find that the region
will experience war on the basis of water shortages at the same time and in a contradictory manner.
The region's resource wealth is also analysed as a source of conflict.
So, for example, oil is sometimes used in a simplistic manner, manner to explain conflict and other forms of geopolitical intrigue.
Again, another example of this would be Syria and the argument against circulated that
circulated in the last decade that one of the reasons behind Qatar's support
for the Syrian opposition was that the Assad regime refused to allow concepts of a construction pipeline that would link its gas to Western markets.
Again, there's not really any evidence for this. So these these these kind of tropes have quite a bit.
They they persist, we can find them emerging again and again and again.
And they have quite deep sort of ontological roots, I think.
And essentially, they I would argue that they're a form of environmental orientalism, essentially.
So these ideas rest on the assumption that societies in the region do not have the same agency over the environment as you might find in the West.
There is this depiction that societies in the region are subjects of the environment.
They are determined by the environment. They are not masters of the environment. And as I said, these depictions are not new.
They're rooted in an environmental imaginary that has been present in the western perception of the Orient for several centuries.
Now, I won't read these out, but whilst I'm talking, perhaps you could.
If you're interested, you can have a look at them, but these are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about, I think.
And they are the writings of Western European explorers and historians who visited various parts of the Middle East during this time.
And essentially, what you can see here is this idea that the desert is both exotic but also a form of abnormal nature
manifest the notion that this is a biblical and ancient landscape whose contemporary inhabitants,
indigenous inhabitants are unable to take care of the land.
And therefore this has led to this. Does a certification and the insinuation is,
and many of these kinds of reflections is that this inability to take care of land and govern land and care
for land is that it justifies the colonial intervention and colonial governance in some way or another.
Now, these tropes, as I say, that they're very persistent and they exist in contemporary forms of Western culture on the left,
many of you will recognise that as being a scene in Lawrence of Arabia.
And I think that's a very good example of what I'm referring to.
This is the scene in which one Bedouin tribesman shoots another in a dispute over water.
And I think this is an example of what I'm referring to, that this is an image of a society that is in a constant state of conflict over resources.
And what's particularly interesting about this example is that obviously between them, as Lawrence himself, who is seen in this scene,
is depicted in the scene as the kind of voice of moderation the person who's
trying to stabilise this region and prevent these conflicts and bring some unity,
but to the people. Another example would be on the right, which is a scene from Black Hawk Down,
and it's the scene where the American Marines fly over Mogadishu and experience
a warlord seising the food of of of that's supposed to go to two people.
And what's interesting about this is that in terms of the cinematography,
is that you can see that in the clip and the picture that they actually the the they've put
a certain type of lens on the film that is intended to make the place Somalia look dirtier,
darker, more threatening. And that's actually other people have written about this.
And this also takes place elsewhere, particularly, for example, in films about someone like Mexico, for example.
So these what I've done here is really try and explain or argue that the way the
western perception of the environment is problematic for all kinds of reasons,
and it's tended to create this kind of exceptional view that leads to quite hysterical,
sensational coverage coverage is actually an actual fact wrong for various reasons.
So what I'm going to do now is move on a little bit and talk about what political colours you can tell us about some of the government policies that
are being applied in the region that are intended to at least they have the stated intention of trying to address environmental sustainability.
Now, I think by and large, I think political ecology would tell us that many of these policies and plans will most
likely fail in their objective to achieve a genuine form of environmental sustainability.
And I'm talking here about the slew of news announcements that we can almost see on a weekly basis
at the moment of very large and ambitious projects that are intended to address the environment.
So, for example, renewable energy projects, forestation desalination, vertical farming, new cities in the desert.
Geoengineering, carbon extraction. Now, some of these projects, particularly renewable energy, clearly do have benefits in terms of sustainability.
The renewable energy can obviously lead to the decarbonisation of energy systems.
However, what I would argue here really is that what has tended to take place is that the hype and the policy discourse
surrounded by renewable energy projects has also become a form of politics that is quite important.
So it's not necessarily about achieving a decarbonisation. It's about the kind of techno politics that surrounds these two forms of projects.
And if we actually look at the the details of these projects,
we can see that the idea that there is a green energy transition in place becomes a little bit problematic.
So for example, if you were to look at the UAE,
you can see and UAE is one country that often you can see in reports that there is an assumption that a green energy transition is taking place there.
However, you can see that currently the green,
the amount of renewable energy that constitutes the country's power mix is around two percent, maybe less.
And even by 2050, only 50 percent of the country's power generation will come from renewable energy.
Maybe less, maybe 46 percent, actually. And just to give you an example of another example of how why,
I think we should all be a little bit questionable about these claims and 2023 Dubai will complete a coal fired power station.
So again, this is not really the kind of thing you would expect from a society that is making a genuine renewable energy transition.
Now, in other cases, these projects are not environmentally sustainable at all, but really, they're about what looks like going on.
Who wrote a very interesting book called Spaceship in the Desert, described as technical interventions.
They are essentially designed to displace unsustainable unsustainability, environmental and sustainability elsewhere.
They can either spatially, either literally physically to another place or temporarily into the future.
So in this sense, this kind of, uh, this is, I think,
really an example of how governments in the region are preferring to have a technical
intervention into the social metabolism that essentially is designed to avoid the very
tricky questions and difficult questions of achieving real sustainability and also
depoliticise these questions and turn them into something that is purely technocratic.
So, for example, if you were to look at desalination, you can see that this is a highly power intensive process,
desalination being the removal of seawater and turning it into freshwater from the sea,
which is a very common practise in places like the Gulf, but also increasingly in Jordan and Israel.
But you can see that in reality, this is a very power intensive process.
Most of the power that it consumes as a carbon footprint. So these processes have a very large carbon footprint.
And moreover, it dumps the saline back into the sea, which has a damaging effect on marine ecosystems,
but also leads to rising saline content in the sea.
So in the future, desalination will become a more costly and more difficult process.
And moreover, these projects are often are unlikely to be socially progressive,
there is tends to be an assumption that technology will lead to social progress.
And I think this is something that we, as a society, as a global society are beginning to realise is not the case.
We can certainly see that in other areas, such as big data.
But the assumption that these projects will lead to social progress is, I think, questionable,
and often they tend to be very top-down and reproduce existing social inequalities and hierarchies.
I want to give you an example here. So this is, I think, a very good example of the type of project that I'm referring to is a kind of mega project.
And this is Neom in Saudi Arabia, a Neom is a new city that's been established by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
It's very, obviously very important to him politically, ethically and economically in terms of his so-called vision for the country.
And one example of this, the kind of manner in which you have a sort of policy hype that's attached to these projects would be
this latest announcement that they intend to build a city that will take the shape of a straight line.
It's called the line. And I actually don't necessarily think that this will ever be constructed.
I think it's actually just an attempt to create publicity and attention.
But what you can see in a project like this is that in terms of that,
reproducing the the same high hierarchies and being very top-down is that this project actually displace local people and displaced the local tribe.
And in actual fact, it resulted in the killing and in clashes with security forces off of one of these tribesmen.
And ultimately, I think that many of these projects really are just about the usual concerns of any ruling elite.
The dominant motivation within many of these so-called these projects that are intended to try and achieve sustainability is,
in reality, just the reproduction of power, both in terms of public image and making money.
And essentially, they're a form of techno politics that are intended to create the image of progress.
And also create new business opportunities and sources of rent for the ruling elite in different ways.
OK, so I'm going to move on to the final part of the lecture,
and I'm going to talk a little bit about what political ecology could inform us of alternatives.
So if this isn't going to work, this is unlikely to achieve real sustainability, then what can we do?
What can we look at? What might be the model for a more sustainable relationship with the environment?
So on this question,
political ecology would guide us to the need for a deeper systemic change in order to create a genuinely harmonious relationship with our ecology.
And in that sense, I think one lesson that we could learn would be from the forms of environmental
governance that existed prior to the formation of states in the region.
Now, in contrast to the type of violent chaos that is depicted in films such as Lawrence of Arabia Pastoral Cultures,
the Bedouin tribes of the region often relied on systems of environmental governance that were remarkably sophisticated and effective.
And I'm referring to the example of hemos or Armia, which is an Arabic word that refers essentially to protected places.
And these existed in most of the arid rangelands of the region,
and they were essentially common lands that were subject to tribal agreements in order to prevent overexploitation and grazing.
They did prohibit access to other people,
but often there is some evidence to suggest that these disputes were managed relatively peacefully, although not always.
Another example would be the types of agreements and cooperation that could be found in the management of terrorist agriculture.
For example, in South Arabia, but also elsewhere in the region.
This system has pretty much disappeared as a result of the emergence of states in the 20th century that essentially nationalised land.
And what's interesting is that you can see in the literature that this at the
end of the system actually led to environmental degradation and overgrazing.
But I'm not suggesting that a return to this way of life is either desirable or feasible.
What I am saying is that this system could be taken as a precedent of more sustainable living.
One that has clear indigenous antecedents.
So this is not something that is imposed from outside it, something that is already present within the kind of cultural tradition of the region.
Now, the other direction in which political ecology would point towards the region,
social movements and often the study of these movements in the West has tended to focus on the implications for strategy and security,
and the internal substance of these revolutions and rebellions is some sometimes subject to less attention.
And one area in which this is definitely the case is the kind of ecological environmental features of these social movements.
And I would argue that much of the history of the region's social movements,
whether it be the Palestinian national movement, the Egyptian revolution, the Rojava region,
the Lebanese protests of the last couple of years,
the Doha revolution of the 60s and 70s were all partly motivated by questions of environmental justice.
Now, in some ways, this may seem to be obvious to some of you, but I think it's worth reiterating.
And I think it's worth reiterating because these movements history of peasant rebellions and resistance against settler colonialism,
monopolisation of land and water and dispossession has often been hidden and distorted.
And I think this these movements allow us to imagine an alternative possibility.
The confirmation of the existence of social agency over the environment, as well as its control by ruling elites and the colonial powers.
And with these movements in mind, the societies of the Middle East should not be seen as resigned to the fate of environmental crisis.
And they are also a reminder of the fact that the possibility for future dissent is always going to be present.
OK, I'm going to end there.
I've realised I've covered a lot of ground and half an hour, so if anyone has any further questions, I'd look forward to to try and answer them.
Thank you. Thank you, Christian. I have a question from Karim in Guinea, and I'll read it to you.
It is that perhaps there is a distinction to be made here between media sensationalism about
political impacts of climate change and the region's fundamental environmental conditions.
The fact that environmental conditions across the region are largely less well, the text is less unsuitable for human settlement,
but I think perhaps you meant less suitable for human settlement than temperate climates,
except for a few geographic locations where water, bio capacity and climate allow, it makes the region highly vulnerable to climate change.
There are numerous studies on the subject. Are we suggesting that this is not true?
I'm not suggesting it's not true. I think that there are features of the region that make it vulnerable to
environmental reasons that make it vulnerable to something such as climate change.
But what I am saying is that this is that type of question is often treated in a very exceptional manner.
So for example, I live in the Netherlands, which is a country that sits below sea level and is also highly susceptible to climate change.
But I don't necessarily see the Netherlands being treated in the same way as I do.
I call edges of the Middle East and North Africa.
So I think that my argument is, is that this kind of environmental reality is not something that I'm refuting,
but rather what I am arguing is that the treatment of the ecology of the region,
both within mainstream media and within, within some scholarship and within policy research tends to as a tendency to accept and
place an emphasis on or not place enough emphasis on human agency over the environment.
OK. Remind remind the participants that if you want to ask questions, use the Q&A function and Zoom.
I'll ask a question. At one point, you mentioned that most of the of the policies for creating sustainable living in the region will fail,
and it immediately occurred to me that that is very much the case here as well in this country.
You know, for example, pats itself on the back for reducing automobile emissions,
but at the same time is expanding its transportation network in ways and, you know,
telling itself that it can, you know, avoid changing its lifestyle by getting everybody to switch to electric cars,
which actually have at least as large a carbon footprint.
When you look at it from the beginning of production,
all the way to the end of its use as conventional automobiles, possibly even more, it's not going to.
It's actually facilitating that is only going to make the environmental crisis worse from the perspective of this what what this country does with it.
But then the trajectory of places in the Middle East, like Cairo, for example, and you know,
you were sort of raising the, you know, the visions of, you know, kind of traditional pastoral land use and so forth.
But actually, you know, sort of the traditional big cities like Cairo compared to on a per capita basis to cities in the West is very efficient.
And yet the trajectory of Cairo is is all about trying to make Cairo more like the UK.
And so, I mean, what what does one do with this? I mean, you know,
this is actually the trajectory of the political ecology seems to be going exactly
in the opposite direction that the era sustaining that that you're arguing,
you know, that that it could go.
And you know, when you're talking about precedents, shouldn't you be looking more at at the urban precedence than the,
you know, kind of the land use and the pastoral precedents? Yes.
I mean, I think when I when I say that many of these projects,
particularly I'm talking about the mega projects that really substantially, you know, enormous projects that the sometimes discussed.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's no difference there between, you know,
forms of Western policy and the sense that most Western policy is not necessarily about achieving genuine sustainability.
It's rather, I think, a form of modernism that is essentially about, uh, well, partly again, about displacing unsustainability elsewhere.
So certainly within the West, you know, you can see that something like electric cars or the industrialisation process,
the concept that the commodities and technology that we consume is produced elsewhere.
So, you know, that's one argument you can make about China, for example,
in the sense that one of the reasons why it has such a large carbon footprint is that it is essentially the workshop of the world.
And I, when I say that they will most likely fail, then there is no difference that this isn't something that is.
I think you could say the same thing about many, many regions of the world, particularly in the West.
In terms of your question about Egypt, I mean, that's a really good.
I'm glad you raised that because Egypt has a very light.
Cairo has a very high rate of waste recycling.
I think it's one of even one of the highest in the world. But the reason why that's one of the reasons why that's the case is that the waste
disposal is undertaken by a group of people who live in an area outside of Cairo,
and they do it in a albeit in very unpleasant circumstances, but they do it by hand.
It's a kind of cottage industry. And I think that's a good example of the fact that the bottom up forms of activity tend to
be more successful than top-down forms of activity in the sense that as far as I'm aware,
they did try and privatise garbage collection in Egypt a few years ago, and they still try and do this.
But they the corporate garbage collection in Cairo,
which just simply wasn't as efficient as the kind of cottage industry the informal collection of garbage.
Now lastly, I'm not sure what your final question was, but how can we why are we looking at rural forms of of,
uh, we've got another question that is along the same lines.
This is from Faisal Hamada, and it's a it's a more efficient formulation of the same question that I was just trying to ask a moment ago.
You're saying, first of all, saying, thanks for the talk. I wonder if there's a place for urbanism in discussions of political ecology in the region
that isn't necessarily dictated through the kinds of top-down spectacles you discuss.
I mean, you were you. You were just talking about that a moment ago. Perhaps you could elaborate on it a bit more.
I mean, I'm kind of more of a rural less.
So I'm not. I'm less of an urban asset in terms of my perspective, but I think that's obviously a really important question.
But I think that what is, uh, you know, forms of democracy, whether it be energy, democracy or access to commodities or access to resources,
access to water are often, you know, that's that's a kind of that's a key question within urban society.
So I think, for example, if you were to look at the protests that took place in Lebanon off of garbage, this was kind of, you know,
it wasn't in some ways this underlines what I'm talking about in the sense that the protests in Lebanon
started in around 2015 or the current wave of protests and they started as a result of the garbage crisis.
So, you know, in terms of understanding environmental justice movements in the region, yes, there is a peasant movement undoubtably.
I mean, we could argue that the 2011 revolution in Egypt has this whole other history, which is one of a peasant movement.
And Sukarno, whose name I actually saw in the participants has written about this and come up
with some really interesting details of the number of people who join unions.
Farmers unions after the 2011 revolution in Egypt was, you know, upwards of 800000 people.
But also, we could say the same thing about urban movements. Urban social movements are often about questions of environmental justice.
If we look at, for example, Lebanon and we look at what took place there, I mean, that was clearly a.
The garbage crisis for a lot of people represented a whole lot of other things that were wrong with society.
But it was the garbage crisis that really was the trigger. I'm not sure if I've answered your question, but I've done my best to.
OK, here's here's another question this one is from Yusef Sharif,
who says authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa are using the fight against climate
change the way they use the war on terror in previous decades as a means to secure Western support.
Do you have any thoughts on this hypothesis? Yeah, I think I think I think unfortunately, climate will become highly securitised in different ways.
And I think the you know, I mean, I saw, for example,
the other day that the UK government is trying to implement new regulation that would criminalise protest against, for example, oil infrastructure.
So I think that on one level, you know, that kind of confirms what you're talking about in some ways in the sense that on one level,
it will be used the sort of growing discontent about the environment.
Well, I think we responded to with increasing securitisation, but also a lot of the kind of western, uh, governments.
But I think some governments in the region will view questions of resources and questions of access to resources in a very securitised manner.
I actually there's a couple of the some interesting research is being done actually to show how
Western militaries are really incorporating this kind of securitised attitude towards climate change.
So I think I think that that's that's absolutely correct. I have both a comment and a question.
It came in two parts, it's from Sarah Irving and the comment is, well, I agree with the overall point of the lecture.
I also wonder a bit about the opening point regarding the media portrayals.
Quite a few of the examples shown look very similar to me two examples about other regions with environmental similarities,
such as Australia, or which also use apocalyptic headlines to talk about climate change in order to spur action.
So maybe such as regarding massive flooding in southern and eastern England?
So that was the comment part, and the question from Sarah Irving is is the sensational coverage more than about developing
genres of climate change journalism than about Orientalism in this particular case?
Yeah, I mean, I think I think I think there's some maybe some truth to that to a certain extent,
in the sense that, you know, sensationalist headlines will always sell right.
Headlines are always going to try and portray something as being dramatic.
And, you know, because that's what sells newspapers.
But I think in this case, what my point is is that this is not just about media representation.
It goes much deeper into the western canon in terms of the way in which the environment in the region is portrayed,
and this is something that's been taking place really for several centuries.
So I think it it doesn't for me, it definitely does have it definitely fits within this idea of sort of Orientalist imaginary of the region.
So I think this is manifest in, uh, you know, the media form, and it's partly because of sensationalist media coverage.
But I do think it has some kind of ontological, uh, roots as well.
OK. And we have a question from Andrew Arsen, who says, thanks for the paper that travelled very far in a short time.
I guess you must have heard an earlier version of your paper, just two small empirical questions.
One is about the effects of agribusiness, particularly under neoliberal conditions on traditional modes of farming.
I'm thinking here, for instance,
of Rameez Raikes work on the decline of terrorist farming in the Bekaa to make way for fruit trees and the environmental degradation that followed.
How does this compare to the high modernist techno politics of nationalising states that you mentioned towards the end?
The other is simply to push you a bit more without wanting to lapse into pessimism
or cynicism on the potential of social movements and the fact of corporate,
as well as state initiatives like mining, quarrying, landfills, dam projects,
etc. How much are these able to exert social agency in the face of these transformations of the rural landscape?
So these are two good questions. So I mean, in terms of agribusiness and its effect on traditional modes of farming,
I mean, I think that's been a substantial change has taken place in the last two decades.
But again, it's not something necessarily that's new. I mean, you could also observe processes of agrarian change taking place, you know,
since Muhammad Ali in Egypt and in some ways, um, so perhaps in that sense, you know,
this kind of what you refer to as high modernist techno politics of of of states is not necessarily something that's new and it has precedents and,
you know, projects that we've previously observed in the region.
You know, for example, it could be that one dam, for example, the high dam and other similar projects.
And in terms of the effect, but the contemporary effect of agribusiness on on small farming, I think it's being, you know, substantial.
I think that if you were to look at a country like Egypt, that the growth in export agriculture and foreign investment in agriculture has
taken place at the same time as a kind of decreased support for small farmers.
And what's interesting is that this is not necessarily addressed food security.
You know it. Food security in Egypt has probably declined as a result, despite the fact that,
you know, there's been an increased level of investment and despite the fact that,
you know, the more resources have been given towards agriculture in terms of your second question,
I mean, the point this year really is that, yes, I mean,
I'm not trying to argue that social movements do not face substantial an enormous power in terms of their struggles over resources.
But what I am saying is that sometimes this, uh,
this history and this presence of an environmental movement in the region has completely erased or completely forgotten about.
And I think it's important not just for the Middle East,
but for all of us at the moment to not resign ourselves to a catastrophe and to not resign ourselves to, you know,
apocalypse in some ways,
because I think that's going to be an increasing problem amongst people as they resign themselves to the worst effects of climate change.
So I think then that that's something that I think is present within the tradition of
political ecology in the sense that it really emphasises space for social social agency.
So my to be simple,
I think my argument is it's not it's not that I'm not doubting that the art that these movements are often unsuccessful or face a huge obstacle.
But what I am arguing is that they are present and they have potential and they will always have potential.
OK, I have a question from Laura James, which is that given the challenge to long term habitability in the Gulf region,
especially, why is so little realistically being done to address climate change?
That might put a little twist of my own on that,
because I think in some ways you've already answered this question when you were talking about megaprojects and their prospects for success,
which suggests or maybe not very high, but is there any route to to?
Promoting environmental sustainability that comes from below in the Gulf, because it always appears, at least from the outside,
that everything is top down, everything that happens is done through the state and the states alliances with businesses.
But is there any possibility of a kind of Bottom-Up system?
Movements in the Gulf, I think, need to answer the chancellor's question first.
I mean, I think that things are being done. It's just not necessarily about achieving what I would describe as a genuine form of sustainability.
And I think that, you know, don't underestimate this kind of the application of techno modernity to the environment.
So, you know, the idea that we can kind of that these societies could potentially use because substantial resources to essentially
re-engineer the social metabolism to ensure that all of the vulnerabilities that they might face are displaced elsewhere.
But fundamentally, I do not see, you know, that the Gulf countries of the Gulf oil producers, for example, are not about to stop producing oil.
The renewable energy is not necessarily done, something that is not something that's a result of kind of concerns over survival.
It's actually, I think, in my opinion, the kind of investment asset class.
So I think there isn't necessarily that much being done.
But don't underestimate because these are very wealthy societies in some cases.
Don't underestimate just how much they can. How much money and resources they will throw at the problem in order to avoid the kind of tough questions.
Now, to answer your question, Walter, is there any kind of environmental movement in the region?
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is my argument is that there always is. It may just not be one that is recognisable or is one that is, you know.
Is able to assemble on the streets or have some form of assembly.
But I do think you can find in the region that there are definitely citizens who are concerned about the environment,
whether they are able to actually, uh, how that how they navigate the political realities of the region, I think, is something else.
But I do also think that you will find there is definitely a kind of government sponsored, a form of environmentalism.
And also, we need to acknowledge the fact that if we looked at, we'll look at some of the societies in the region, for example, the UAE.
Sheikh Zayed, the founding father of the UAE, had a very strong environmental image.
So this is a kind of example of a kind of government sponsored form of environmental ism,
which I think will, will, will be which is present and may have some form of influence in some way.
But I also think there may be other, more kind of less more politicised,
more contentious forms of environmentalism that are existing in some places, but and maybe may become more influential in the future.
And we have we have a question that's a, you know, a comment and a follow up question on the last one, which is from Cream of Guinea,
which is that what climate adaptation projects in the Netherlands are not technological in nature
and are not top-down funded by the state and implemented by private by the private sector.
Or, you know, one might actually rephrase that question slightly.
Also by saying, you know, is there actually a place anywhere for meaningful climate action that isn't channelled through states?
I mean, I think, again, this is not necessarily a contradiction to my point in the sense that what I'm saying is that,
you know what, I'm referring to the fact that these projects and plans and policies in the region are top down.
That's not necessarily different to the West. And my kind of prediction of failure is equally as applicable to the West as it is to the region.
So I don't necessarily think that that that is a contradiction to my argument.
And in terms of what I don't, I don't really know exactly the details of what is taking place in the Netherlands,
but they most likely are similar in some ways.
But yeah, but I also think maybe that perhaps the extent of techno politics is perhaps slightly different for various reasons,
but that's just my hunch.
We have a question from Manalich Habit, which is, first of all, thank you for the presentation and answering your previous question.
You referred, I think probably she met the one before the one you just answered.
You referred to your genuine idea or form of sustainability.
What is that idea? Also, I agree with you that these rich states will throw money at the problem,
but I wasn't sure if you mean this will be a cosmetic cover or actually solve the issues.
So, I mean, that's a good question. And what I want to be honest with you,
I've I'm of the conclusion that genuine form of sustainability is no longer compatible with our current economic system and that
really one of the only means of achieving genuine sustainability is no longer adhering to a kind of infinite growth economic system.
It's just not possible, in my opinion, which is and this is why I am essentially adhering to the to the de-growth school
and that that that's a hugely controversial school and it has all kinds of problems.
And I'm not saying that I have answers to those problems, but I do not think that the current system will achieve genuine sustainability.
So in that sense that, you know, I think a lot of these, uh, uh,
projects in the region really have this kind of concept of technical adjustments are not really
are really about kind of just sort of trying to maintain the system as they are elsewhere.
In terms of your second programme, when some rich states from one the programme.
I think I think there is a tendency to I mean, for example, if we were to look at food, you know,
the these countries will develop supply chains have already developed supply chains that will ensure access to food,
whether that be through, for example, direct acquisition of land, but also contracts in the private market.
And that's one way in which one example of the way in which these countries will be able
to achieve some sort of form of climate resilience in the face of various problems.
And in that sense, we should really kind of make a distinction between, for example, the very wealthy states of the region.
So, for example, someone like UAE or Qatar and, you know, the poorer states of the region,
and there is a huge inequality in terms of how they will be able to cope with these problems.
So for example, in terms of spikes in food markets that may be maybe in the future could be caused by, um, you know, climate events, droughts,
for example, the some of the Gulf states will be able to respond to that quite successfully,
or they will be able to respond to poorer states will not.
So I think that's the kind of material feature that I'm describing here, but there's also a kind of discursive question of images as well.
And a more political question.
And I think again, some of these projects that are being discussed are not really about sort of some of the material outcome.
They're actually just about, you know,
laundering image and creating the appearance of progress and all the kind of techno political aspects, some of which I've described.
OK, thank you very much, Christian. That was an excellent presentation, and you got a good audience and great question.
Very good questions. We've come to the end of our hour.
And so on behalf of the Middle East, senator, I want to thank you very much for participating in our seminar.
It was a great presentation, very thought provoking, and we hope to see you again.
Well, we hope to see someday and present. I'm sorry, I couldn't be there in person.
Sorry, we're OK. And with that, I say goodnight to our audience and to our speaker.
And again, thank you very much for participating in our seminar. Thank you very much.
Thanks to everyone for their questions and thanks for attending.